On being a theology student

Something of the work in theological study has been a gestation period for me, a maturation of Christ in me, and I in Him. Theological study has been to begin seeing my own immaturity. Frankly, it is there with me as I am reading and writing. It is in the ways my mind is racing to argue with an author before I have let them have their say, or inversely in the unthinking acceptance of every statement on every page. It is with me in the silly, inefficient, and ineffective construction of an argument. This exposure of my own immaturity, and the requirement to persist anyway, is developing within me not only a grace with myself, but with others as well. In continuing the work, I am learning to be patient and trust God. But of course this does not mean that our immaturity — my immaturity — is inconsequential. God is not leaving my neighbors to suffer with it. It simply means that lately, when I am brought to consider my immaturity, I am also brought to remember the sweetness of God’s care my whole life. “Jesus” is one of the earliest names I learned. My family read the Scriptures. We went to church. My parents led worship. One of the earliest songs I wrote was at the age of five. It was a sincere little tune about my love for Jesus. In keeping with my upbringing, I have continued to seek the Lord that I might grow in Him, which is to say that I have continued to be sought by Him that He might grow in me.

Along that winding path of maturation, one memory that has returned to me is a thought about Scripture that emerged when I was quite young, a thought that I would now call inappropriate. I was a young teenager when a man from the congregation, somewhere in his late twenties, took me under his wing and began teaching me drums. In between lessons we would talk about the church, the Bible, God, etc. Observing him as he interacted with others, I noticed his use of the Scriptures as a tool, a weapon of sorts, in arguments with other Christians. I remember a peculiar, slow-crawling feeling that this was an appealing reason to learn the Bible more. What a simply seductive little tomb to seal away the light. And it would be embarrassing to admit all of that here and now, but a better thought has helped roll that stone away (particularly through my theological education) that God is at work in me precisely in my weakness. And while I may not be ready to stand alongside Paul boasting in it, certainly I find a grace in confession: the Scriptures are not for my use in making a name for myself. It is my sense now that true theological development (and there is clearly false) should lead us to utter humility of speech, faithful care of our neighbors, tearful longing for the goodness God intends for all things, and an abiding joy in suffering. None of these are found in the use of Scripture as a tool for social dominance, nor the malignant theologies that arise from such use.

Along with maturation, just as infants become toddlers, comes the learning of speech. Theological study has been a way of prayer, a conversation with the saints and with God about who He is, who I am, who my neighbor is, etc. And once any answer comes, say that I and my neighbor are mutually “images of God”, then another question emerges, and another, and so on. Who is the God we are images of? What is the relationship between any and all of us, and why? As each question unfolds, a myriad of insufficient answers can, and almost invariably do, present themselves. The trouble is that often, at least at very first, they satisfy. And so we bring them to speech, sing them in our songs, use them in sermons, in cliches and the like. The process of maturing in God however goads us such that these insufficient answers become less and less appetizing on our tongues, urging us deeper into both dissatisfaction and surprise. This, I think, is what is happening in each of us as the Spirit brings us to speak in new tongues, or brings us to holy silence.

What then is the relationship of theological study and the call of ministry for me? One of the difficulties in this question lies in the fact that I do not have a specific sense of what I am called to do. I perhaps used to, but not anymore. Occasionally others call upon me to teach or lead within the church in some capacity, but I am hardly a “minister” in the vocational sense. Yet even still there remains a sense of “calling.” A calling to what, I still do not know. Nevertheless, I’ll attempt an answer here, however insufficient or unsatisfying.

First the question implies an answer. The question is not about the relationship of theology and ministry but the study of it. The study of theology is in itself both a means and an end precisely because of who it is we are studying. Bonhoeffer tells us that this question, the study of “who” God is, is the question of everything because it brings us to the end of ourselves as we are creatures held in the hands of our Creator. “It is only with reference to God that human beings know who they are.” But is also the end of ourselves by another meaning in that the One we are asking about is our end, our telos, our future. The study of theology is to study what it means to be who we are, to become ourselves with God and others in His will for us. But none of this should lead us to believe that the project is entirely a journey of exploring the question of “who” alone. The revelation that God brings is that “who” we are is nothing short of a calling to do something, to be something in our doing of it. This is how we come to know God: in God’s work in us and for us, joined to His work in and for all. Thus, as Chris Green tells us, “who we are comes to be known only in our doing of what it is we are called to do.” We are the children of God as we walk in the light. And it means to do this work because of who it is that is working in us, faithful as He is to complete it. God brings us to our end, both our judgement and our fullness, our completion, and He does so in joining us to work alongside Him in joy. The inherent discipline within theological study then is to be a disciplined one, a disciple. It is to be brought into the hard work of our vocation, to study so that we become who we are to do what we are to do.

Doing the work of ministry then is to fulfill our human calling in a particular way, a way that separates us from the life we would live without deep attentiveness to what God wants for us and our neighbors. Like Gideon’s men separated at the river’s edge by how they drew water to their lips, ministry is attending to what is right under our noses yet always with our eyes up, alert to signs of the wind of the Spirit which “blows wherever it wills”. We are, as Green reminds us, “singled out by God to share in the work of making room,” that our vocation is “always only on behalf of others — never instead of them, much less against them.” We are to be for others the way God is for us, to be people carried along by the wind of the Spirit. Theological study reminds us that our attention can easily be swept to programs and pragmatics, but that our first and last attention should be upon the One who is searching the hidden things in us and for the ones ones hidden from us. Thus our attention is drawn first to consider God, who is for us as we will be for others, and then to follow his line of sight to those to whom He is sending us. Ministry is both a calling and a sending.

What then does ministry, as essentially the calling and sending of human beings, have to do with the Church? For myself, at least in part, I will have to answer with the most captivating and mystical experience of the Eucharist I have ever had. Without laboring through every detail here, I will just say that in a particularly dark time, when I knew only despair in any given moment, the Spirit served me the bread and the wine in an unforgettable and undeniable way. Two things that remain with me about that day: 1) That my reception of it in the Church prepared me for my reception of it spiritually that day, and 2) My heart, which had been too distressed to carry any needs of others, was lifted to join the Spirit in interceding for those who were in need. And so I might say that the Eucharist strengthened me so as to burden me that I could bear my neighbors’ needs to the Lord in prayer again. Or to say it another way, while I was yet being consumed from within, Christ’s meal came to consume me so that I might be filled anew. And yet another way, I was met in my despair with joy so that I could agonize with God over the harm coming to others. All of this to suggest that it is to the Table and to fellowship that I have been called to serve, but also that it is theological study that has helped me to contemplate what that moment might be for me.

By now I have tried to say (what others have said more poignantly) that the study of God is an attentiveness to a calling which is human, communal and burdened. It likely cannot be clearer that it means that I am called to the Church, as difficult and painful as that calling has been thus far. However, I can say that through my theological study something has changed about the way I engage the Church. It is as if all along there have been shadowed versions of the good at work in me, and only now can I begin to see them. Much like the blind man in Mark 8 who is led by the hand and touched by Jesus so as to see “men as trees, walking” I am in need of his hand leading me to see more clearly. Even still, now instead of listening to every sermon with a critical ear, I find within me an eagerness to hear the goodness of God spoken well. Instead of anxiety about who I am and where my place is among the other staff or laity, I find a peace in welcoming and befriending the easy to overlook among us. In other words, theological study has made a peace within possible so that I can be about the work of peacemaking, or at the very least to be a less chaotic presence. There is at the same time both a greater assurance and a greater humility about perspectives I hold, or rather perspectives which have a hold of me.

And yet there are ideas, and the harmfulness which arises from them, that need to be thwarted. It is just as false to ministry to bring our insecurities dissonantly to the forefront of Church community as much as it is to only ever harmonize dissonances. The writer of Hebrews encourages to “lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us”. If theological study has had any relationship to ministry for me it has been to show that even when we are talking and teaching others about sin, if not especially then, we are vulnerable to the snares. The ease with which we are ensnared lies precisely in our zeal to hunt it down and route it out rather than turning our efforts toward freeing those who are caught and wounded in its trappings. We are easily ensnared because we are bedazzled by oncoming lights, as “Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14). Theological study, then, is a narrowing of our perceiving as much as it is a broadening. It is meant to draw us to discernment, to focus, to see what is truly happening beneath whatever may seem to be. Of course there are those who do not know the Name we are trying to make, but it is also true that there are ways those, who know the Name, use it for whatever they can make from it. Again, this can seem satisfying to us, appealing to even our good desires for God to be at work in us and through us. And much worse, because we already believe that our success in using the Name for our ends is a sign that God is in our misuse, when God comes truly to do his work, He will have to work against what we have done in His Name, and just so, we will fervently resist Him. Theological study prompts us not only to desire God, but to see how even our godly desires can often be bent against us, against God, and against the good of our neighbors. So then when our ministering is self-appeasing and successful, we are pressed to look more deeply, to aim instead for faithfulness rather than success, and to depend on God and neighbor to discern the Light from the lights.

And so, while I do not know precisely what I am called to do in ministry, this is perhaps why I feel drawn to study theology now —because it is not useful to me. I am not able to apply it to make a life for myself that is profitable or successful. And because I am not able to lay hold of it, it is only able to lay hold of me. It questions me and asks if it is truly Christ’s life that has hold of my imagination, especially as successes may come their way. It prompts me to pause before I speak to my neighbors who suffer illness to consider if anything I might say would help them to hear the word God is speaking, and then to speak only after silence and prayer to God so that any speech or silence might be filled with the Spirit’s voice. I am studying theology because it is the way God is making me myself, more human, more priestly, more neighborly, more patient. It is a way God is filling me with His roominess for others in humility. It is drawing me to the suffering of others for their care and for their justice. It is producing a painful hope for God’s beauty to be made known through my life as it is joined to His. It is the way God is knitting me together in his womb, nursing me at his breast, and birthing me anew.

Judas and Jesus

It’s the day after Easter, and if I’m honest, I still feel the sting of Friday.  I’ve been raised to celebrate Easter, but frankly, today I wonder where the resurrection is in my own personal story.  Like me, perhaps you’ve spent this past week contemplating the story of Jesus’ betrayal, crucifixion, burial and resurrection. Oddly, what has stood out to me this year is the story of Judas. 

Judas is a zealot, a Jew who wants God to vindicate Israel against their oppressors, and believes this must be done with a violent, bloody rebellion.  He walks alongside Jesus through some of the most important moments of their lives. And yet, his life with Jesus and others disappoints him. Jesus, it would seem, perhaps agrees on where the story should go, just… not how to get there.  Moment after frustrating moment builds, fastening like a cord around his neck.  The noose he eventually hangs himself with grows upon him. It constricts without his notice – this isn’t a moment of decision, but a snare that takes over his life, bit by bit, until it’s too late.  Eventually, he gives up his friend, thinking perhaps that this will propel the story in the messy direction he had always wanted. But alas, it backfires horribly.  Jesus won’t become the Messiah Judas wants Him to be. You might say that he f’d up big.  Really ..really big.  And the weight of it plunges him into an unforgiving and relentless abyss. Shame opens up a horizon wide, and swallows him alive, until all he can give anyone is his last, sinking breath. Remorseful, broken-hearted and ashamed, the rope takes its victory.  And I can’t help but feel my jaw tighten as I realize how close I came to this.

Normally, I share theological and Scriptural reflections on this blog, but today I simply want to talk to anyone contemplating suicide, anyone who is where I was. I want to tell you to keep going, keep breathing.  My hope in sharing this part of my life is that it helps you.  No matter where you are, if this message has reached you, I’m grateful.

What I want you to know, friend, is though I don’t know you, I know what it’s like to wrestle against the night just to see another morning. And I know what it is to feel that you don’t deserve to witness that sunlight breaking through your window again. I know what it is to endlessly distract yourself today just so you don’t find yourself imagining again how you will do it. Maybe you’ve been groaning in your sleep too, tearing at your sheets in the night, trying just to crawl back to yourself. Maybe you too have bled your soul, tear-by-tear into your pillow. Friend, I know what it is to feel the air, everywhere, all day, everyday smothering you.  Your chest is a locked cage that your heart doesn’t want the combination to.  Listen to me: Stay alive today. And don’t let anyone shame you for it. You just do whatever it takes right now to breathe.

Do it right now.  Breathe. Do you feel that? Your lungs opening to receive another moment, another second, and this one, and this next one.  You’re here, friend. It hurts like hell – I know it does. But you’re still here. You’re still here, and that’s your victory today.  You’ve anguished through the abandonment, the heartbreak, the humiliation. Now, hold on.  Remember someone -anyone you love, anyone who is good, anyone who’s precious-  and hold on. Do it for them.

And talk! Tell someone trustworthy what’s destroying you this way; it may be the only way to survive.  You are in a battle for your life, and you’re worn out. Maybe you feel unwanted, used, manipulated, forgotten. Unloved. Unseen. Maybe someone didn’t keep you, betrayed you. Maybe you betrayed them, and thus, yourself. You didn’t even know how fragile you were underneath all your sheen, how ugly you felt behind the filters. What can anyone say when you feel like you’ve given everything, and ruined everything at the same time?

Judas and Jesus.

What if Jesus holds only mercy and deep love in his heart for Judas? What if even Judas is wildly wanted and held and remembered by the one whose life he discarded? How then, must we conclude, does God hold you and I? What if what we’ve made of our story isn’t what we think it is at all? What if this messy tale is being written for your good, regardless? What if in the end, it’s all healed and made well somehow? What if there’s…  hope?

For now, the song love hums for me is, “Breathe, Samuel. Just breathe.”  Can you hear your song? Listen.  Breathe and listen.  Meanwhile, my breath goes to vapor in this cold, spring air. It’s the only song I can sing right now:  “I’m still here. I’m still here.”

I hope you’ll sing it with me.

 

 

Artwork: : Landscape by the Sea, Thomas Couture

we’ll fix it together

When I was about 17, I was arguing with my brother, Aaron, who would have been 15. We are both admittedly quite stubborn. My memory doesn’t serve me well on why we were arguing so fiercely. (Isn’t that the way it usually goes?) But I do remember that he was wrong!  Yet, he wouldn’t relent, and he wouldn’t listen either. As I began to explain how thoroughly wrong he was, he covered his ears with both hands and shouted in my face, “LA LA LA LA LA!”

So, I hit him.

I regretted it immediately, but I punched him straight in the face.

Bracing for the fight I assumed was coming, I was shocked to see him recover and stop short. He glared for a moment in anger, swallowed hard, and then his harsh countenance faded to pain. I was stunned to see it just as he turned, leaving me in the living room alone.  Instead of hitting me back, he punched a massive hole in our parents’ wall on his way out.

I felt tiny.

The truth was that I wanted him to hit me back. If he had only hit me back, I’d have felt justified somehow – we’d be “even”. But by absorbing it, and turning the cheek (literally), he delivered the most devastating blow.

Trying to recover from the haymaker he dealt my pride, pondering how to make things right with him, I stared there at the gaping hole. The only thing left in the room with me, it swallowed me. The punch I dealt him was visible somehow, looming there in my face. The only way to heal us was to repair it together, so I prepped the materials, found him outside and slowly handed him a joint knife.

“We’ll fix it together,” I invited him, apologetic and remorseful. He accepted the tool from my hand and nodded, tears in both our eyes. You see, it might not have been my fault there was a hole in the wall, but it was just as much my responsibility.

What are the holes in our world, the wounds we’ve inflicted, the blows dealt long ago and forgotten, yet still they remain?

When we face the major fractures of our world (the phobias and ‘isms), we face massive damage beyond our comprehension to repair. Ruins remain, literally and figuratively. And this inescapable complexity of our history is often answered with the cliche that everything is in God’s control. Some will even insist that God is behind these chaotic events, a puppet master pulling the strings of history, lifting up and tearing down at whim. You’ve maybe heard microcosms of this idea:

Your child died, because God wanted them in heaven.

A tsunami wrecks an entire coastline, because God was angry.

Your wife dies young with cancer, and God has a reason for it.

Follow it out – are you against abortion? God has a purpose for it. Murder? God is up to something there. Sex slavery? Abusive dictatorships? Terrorism? Rape? Torture?  If God has a purpose for these, the logic here would say that working against them is, in effect, working against God.

But, the truth is: God is not “in control” – He’s sovereign. There’s a difference.

God is not controlling – He’s reigning. There’s a difference.

And God is light, and there is no darkness in Him (1 John 1:15), which means He’s not in collusion with the darkness in our world.

If everything evil that happens was ‘supposed’ to happen, then we should never work against anything, ever. But I bet you do. I bet you raise money or toil tirelessly to repair the brokenness in your world.

The phrase “God is in control” is altogether too convenient of a cliche for simply throwing up our hands whenever it suits us, without losing sleep over it.  As Dr. Chris Green says, “There is a false understanding of our faith that says ‘God has done everything that needs to be done, and I just trust it.’ As if the goal is to become as irresponsible as possible.”(emphasis added)

So, when I watched little Omran Daqneesh, the Syrian boy pulled from the rubble of his home, in the back of an ambulance, I couldn’t turn my eyes from him, his bewilderment as he touched his forehead, his realization that he was bleeding, his attempt to wipe it away without being noticed.  I lost myself weeping in my kitchen, staring at my laptop screen as I wondered if this little boy still had any parents to hold him. “Bring him to me, I’ll be his father,” I mumbled in prayer.

But I couldn’t simply mutter some vague prayer, and go on with my day as usual. No, God isn’t “in control,” He’s waiting for us to be responsible! He’s waiting for us to say to Cain, who murdered his brother, Abel: “Yes, we are, in fact, our brother’s keeper!”

There are inspiring human beings keeping their neighbors, who dare to respond to the crises in our world with more than policies and cliches. As the Apostle Paul says, we have been given the responsibility and ministry of this reconciliation and healing. And while God is not in control, He is inviting us: “We’ll fix it together.”

Maybe you are working to end sex trafficking and systemic oppression against women. We’ll fix it together.

Maybe you’re living in an inner-city, mentoring at-risk youth.

We’ll fix it together.

Maybe you’re working at a homeless shelter, serving the forgotten lives of men and women on our streets.

We’ll fix it together.

Maybe you’re intentionally inviting Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, etc. around your dinner table.

We’ll fix it together.

So, I’m leaving in a week.

I’ll go to the Syrian border, not because of a special calling to do so, but because this is the call of God to all human beings, to join Him in His mission to fix it. Human beings, all of us, beautifully made and empowered by the Spirit of God, are invited to do the hard work of repairing what is broken as Christ lives His life with us.

No, it’s not all my fault, and it’s not all yours.

But it doesn’t have to be our fault to be our responsibility.

We’ll fix it together.

Lily

The worst is how life
insists
persists
how you wish it’d resist,
so you’d have something
someone, somehow
to fight

but another day comes
and another day goes
and the whole world spins
while no one knows that yours stopped
back there, somewhere

“You’ll be alright”
as if she wasn’t summer coming through your window,
sunlight resting on your shoulder
still yet the moon while you’d hold her
as if you wanted a night without her,
to ever be “alright” without her
when your grief
is all you have left about her
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”
but what if you’re no longer …. you
so who
and for God’s sake.. why?
%@&# – WHY?!

And
what now?

eat,
sleep,
clean, wait, cry,
weep, throw up, try,
breathe, hold on, toss, turn,
walk, run, hurt, hope, heal, learn
still remember
everyday remember

Remember her smile, how you could fit the sun inside it;
how you let your world revolve behind it
gravity defied it, collided
and how you never wanted anything in return anyway;
anything to return to the way
it was before she came;
that it was all a gift –
a song, given away
and then,
perhaps
– sing.

Undertow

Before I left Chicago, I preached my last sermon titled, “Don’t Drown.”  It was a painful and prophetic unveiling of all that I knew was coming my way: A storm that would inevitably wreck me, and send me where I did not want to go.

Last thing I remember, a good friend, Josiah, as if holding me afloat for one last breath, looked intently at me and said, “Suck it up. Be present” and then I slipped into the undertow. Yet quite unlike Peter, I would not be pulled from the eddy.

Beneath that deep, dark abyss, depression swallowed me alive. Listless and weary, I managed to blink while thoughts of suicide swam through my skull. No amount of white-knuckle, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps mantra was getting air into my lungs, and how I so desperately needed air. My heart was a forgotten anchor at the bottom of the ocean. My thoughts were tangled ropes, strangling me on the floor, and the miles of sea surrounding me, engulfing me, never let up pressure. All I could do was hold my breath, or drown in the despair.

It’s been over a year since, and then today happened.

Today, someone I deeply respect paid me a surprising and sincere compliment about the piercing mark of the Spirit on my life and in my eyes. He hesitantly asked a question, though, that caused me pause:  “What has been the most significant part of your formation?”

Hot tears hid behind my eyes. “Pain,” I stared past him, “Rejection.” His eyes never left mine.

At the end of the day, it’s still a crucified Christ that I follow. However you spin it, living an accepted, comfortable, guarded life doesn’t make sense for Christians who are called to take up a cross. It would make sense if one followed another King – say, for instance, Caesar. How any Christian imagines living a painless life while claiming a crucified Messiah is beyond me. What I know now is this: the Son of God bears the wounds He bears because He became vulnerably human, and any attempt on my behalf to avoid wounded-ness has always and inevitably made me less human, and thus less like Jesus.

Not that pain and rejection are the goal; but a heart lived uncaged, vulnerable to wounding, thundering loudly for the healing of another – that is the goal! And I’m convinced I must find the courage, just as Jesus shows for Thomas, to show up and allow another to place their hand in my side, touch beneath the shallows, even scar me.

Those who have dared to do so know something of me that no one else does. They’ve also hurt me in ways no one else ever will. But know this, friend: I would never write my story another way. I am who I am because of the pain of deep love and loss. I am who I am today, because of the liquid sunlight I watched dance over my head day after day, and the silent cold current that carried my  soul for over a year.

Somehow I learned to breathe, to pray, to swim deeply in God. Beneath the waves, He held me. There, I unwittingly learned that He is the current, the storm, the ocean – all of it. And when He has swept me along to His quiet depths, I will alas, be where I am to be. But more importantly, I will be who I am to be. This false part of me will have died, and a truer me will come up for air.

This undertow will be my baptism.

(t)here

“..lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

When I was kid, I stored up my money in a small chest in my room. One day, while my family was at church, some selfish jerk broke in and stole it all. I was despondent and angry when I came home. It was a lot of money, and I had saved so diligently and tucked it all so carefully away. That unfortunately taught me fear at very young age, and the subsequent habit of checking on my treasures to be sure they’re still with me.

Jesus’ words here point us toward this idea, but how do we hold them rightly? How do we understand these words, not as we mean them to be, but as He means them. Much of this passage has a long history of misinterpretation. When, for some, Heaven means the end of the world, storing up one’s treasure there means essentially forsaking the stark realities of our little planet. “Care little about anything going on here, because getting souls to Heaven is what’s important.” But is this what He means?  I love what NT Wright says, “Heaven is a big deal, but it’s not the end of the world.”

Jesus didn’t believe in a spiritual plane far, far away that God lived in. That’s Gnostic stuff. Believing in an ethereal, distant heaven; a paradise in the clouds is not Christian belief. Jews have historically rejected such an idea, and so had Christians (up until the last 150 years or so, unfortunately.) Christian hope is Heaven that is the resurrection of the body; Heaven that is redemption of the good world around you and me, and that is Good News. Heaven is redemption of the whole thing.

Resurrection affirms that glorious feeling of sun on skin, the salty kiss of your beloved on your shoulder, grass in your toes, your thundering heartbeat when the one you adore is adoring you from across a crowded room.

Resurrection says parties, birthdays, baking bread, making-love to your beloved, whispers in the dark, wine, music, dancing, the oceans and the mountains, the deepest of laughs you have shared, the greatest joys you’ve ever lived, and the most painful aching of your heart   ..matter.

Resurrection means it all matters, so it matters what we do with it all!  

If little ones, weak ones, the displaced, the refugee, the marginalized, the poor, the oppressed; if they suffer – it matters.

For too many years of my life, I was taught to enjoy life, and wait for it to all get swept away. So then, how was I to store treasures in Heaven?  Pray. Talk to people about Jesus. Care about my personal trip to Heaven. Take culturally moral positions on stuff.  Meanwhile, enjoy your steak.

Steak is delicious. Fast cars are fun. Big homes, swimming pools and designer clothing are wonderful things, but all of these must be held in light of a dark reality where orphans go unloved and need homes, countless people simply need clean water, sex slaves need us to end the despicable injustice they’re facing everyday, refugees need safety and the hope for a new life. We live in the bleak historical aftermath of centuries of slavery and the effective ripples of whiteness that continue to haunt people of color. Or where police officers keeping the peace are gunned down by U.S. military veterans in the streets of Dallas.

Christians believe in life. Not just as a political slogan; Christians believe in this life! Not  life after death – but the Life after life-after-death. Heaven is not less than going to be with God, but it is so much more!  It’s resurrection! It’s the pervasive God-reality birthing out from this one, breaking into it through the lifting of the poor, the feeding of the hungry, the giving of clean water to the thirsty; it is forgiveness of our sins against one another, the opening of our blind eyes to the love of God, the tearful reconciliation of enemies, the healing of all Creation.

It is Good. Creation is beautiful.  And you and I are beautiful in it.
Heaven isn’t a distant place – it’s a different space. It’s the presence of God coming here, and that’s what Jesus means when He tells us to store our treasures (t)here.

And you’ve seen that Heaven here.

You’ve seen it in the feeding of homeless. Store it (t)here.
You’ve glimpsed it in the eyes of your sweetheart. Store it (t)here.
You’ve heard it in the giggle of children at Christmas. Store it (t)here.
You’ve felt it in the forgiving of mass-shooters by their victims’ families. Store it (t)here.
Or in the stories of recovering addicts. Store it (t)here.
You’ve witnessed it in the rescue of animals from our oil spills, the wise stewarding of land and sea, the very dew upon vegetables growing in your garden. Store it (t)here.
You’ve felt it in the interlocked fingers of your sweet friend, bowing their head beside you in prayer. Store it (t)here.

There will be Heaven here.

Store it (t)here.

 

to the girl across the street,

I miss you.

I saw you on the internet the other day, but I barely recognized you. Do you remember me?

My mother introduced us to each other when I was just a small boy. She hoped I would know you all my life, to grow up with you, that we’d even dance together one day.

Back then, I noticed something about you that was so darling.  You listened so attentively to others and their stories. You had all the time in the world for people that nobody had time for. People like Ms. Shumacher.

I still can see her with her long, dark hair and giant bifocals that made her eyes look bugged out and massive to me.  She would stand and clap and raise her hands every week in one of only a few dresses she owned and wore on repeat. But you listened so attentively to her on Wednesdays when she would testify. It didn’t matter how long it took her to share, you listened. Though it was some time ago, I can still remember my boyish impatience, but I watched your eyes, and you weren’t in any hurry. You listened like her story was sacred and precious. Like all time was sacred and precious.

You would set the pace without insisting.

And so I learned to see beauty in Ms. Schumacher instead of buggy eyes. I learned to hug her, even if her dress smelled a little dirty, because it’s what I saw you do.

I miss you.

You would listen to my dad sing and play guitar. He loved the Spirit of Jesus He met out in the desert one night, and trusted He could find Him again wherever you were. And you enjoyed him. I mean, I had grown up to the sound of him strumming away in the other room, singing his melancholy tune, but I didn’t know you would love it too.  He wasn’t the world’s best singer or guitar player, but he meant every word he sang. He felt every strum in his chest. And you listened.

I miss you.

Your house was right across the street from mine, and I could come over anytime of the week. And when I did, I always found you up to something kind for a neighbor; something generous; something for somebody somewhere. You were different than the noisy harshness of my schoolroom setting, or some places in my neighborhood, where I was scared to go down the streets on my bike.

But you would go down those streets and your courage taught me not to fear. Some people would have difficult stories to hear, and I didn’t understand them all, but you stood on their porch and just listened. You prayed and listened.

I miss you.

Not because I don’t come over to your house anymore –  I still do.

Not because you’re not home when I come – you still are.

But because you’re different than I remember you.

You’re… cool now.

Too cool for Ms. Schumacher.

Ms. Schumacher can’t get what she has to say down to your thirty-second video. And I guess she’s older now too, so maybe she doesn’t represent your “target audience”? Whatever that means.

You’re busy. You’ve got producing to do.

You hire professional musicians to play at your parties now, and my dad …I get it: he’s great to me!  But I’m still that little boy with a heart full of wonder about his melancholy melody. And you? Well, you have auditions to hold.

You’re louder than I remember, too.  You’ve really only got time for what you want to say now, the positions you stand for, vote on and protest.

Meanwhile, the streets behind my house have gotten scarier it seems, and maybe you don’t want to bother people on their porches anymore. Maybe you sense they don’t like it. But maybe they don’t like it, because they don’t really get to talk?

I know you’ve got a website, and they can find you and come out at their own convenience. You made it easier for them to hear what you had to say this week… heck, they can even download it and share it with their friends. That was kind of you.

You quit smiling at our quirkiness, and letting people be a little weird.  It doesn’t fit your image. You used to hang pictures of real family members on your walls. You traded them for stock photos, actors in staged Bible studies. You didn’t used to count everything so much.  You didn’t use to design logos and bumper sticker slogans so much.  You didn’t own the newest TV’s to display your vision, you simply embodied it.  It’s crazy how all the lights and cameras are on, but I can’t see you as well as I used to for some reason.

When you’re finished being cool; when you’re finished convincing people your positions are right; when you’re finished producing motion graphics, professional rock bands and social media campaigns, will us uncool misfits, melancholy dreamers and scary backstreet neighbors still belong?

She can clap on beat, but will Ms. Shumacher’s glasses and worn out dresses fit the look you’re going for in your new music video? It’s one of the loveliest sounds I can remember, but will my dad’s folky guitar fit your genre..? My neighbors are wonderful people but they don’t even have internet to watch your latest “outreach” video…

Are you caught up in your wedding plans? Too busy getting the perfect building, the perfect colors, the perfect music …did you forget why your groom calls you lovely? Have you forgotten how He flirts with you through the most unlikely of messengers? How he leaves you wild flowers that spring up in a day, and gone the next? How He only writes His best poems for you in the mud on rainy days?

Are you listening?

a silent saturday

It’s a silent Saturday.

Sh, quiet yourself for awhile in the sunlight, and you will hear it.

It’s the silence of love. The truest of loves; a love story, unlike ones we often enjoy.

The love stories we like to live and tell are of our desires fulfilled, needs met and obtaining our beloved. But that is not the story of Jesus on Saturday.

Before his death, he was abandoned and betrayed by even his closest of friends, everyone he loved so deeply. He was lied about and forgotten, standing silently alone at his end. This is the love we witness in the body of  Jesus, as He lie in the depths of the tomb, rejected by the whole world, sealed away by a frozen hush.

This love story is not a story of fulfillment, but of unfulfillment. A story of loss and unrequited love that led Jesus to follow the way of cost.  This love leads Him to the loss of Himself, the giving up of any desire for acceptance or embracing of Himself.

This kind of love doesn’t necessarily meet our needs or desires. This love story is tragic, and yet more beautiful than others, because it does not seek its own. It is patient and kind, forgetting  wrongdoings. It is whispered, not shouted. It is even silent, only seen by and within the eyes of beloved ones. It is costly and always painful.

But this love never gives up; no, this love.   never.   gives.   up.

True love is hopeful, beyond the present mourning. The loss of your beloved is not forever. Even as you sit quietly by a window and look out into the world and wonder, this love is there in that silence. It is present and secretly working.

This love wins in the end. It does not lie in the grave forever. On the third day, Jesus who is dejected by the world is accepted by God. Jesus, who is abandoned by all, is embraced by God.

Jesus, who goes to His death unloved is raised up by the great love of God.

When you sit quietly there, beloved, in the light of Saturday morning, feeling as if your own love seems to be achieving nothing … you are actually there with Jesus in the tomb. And God’s true love is at work in the silence.

Sh, can you feel it?

When you are living with a love in your heart that costs you deeply; when your deepest desires go unmet and unfulfilled; when your love seems to be accomplishing nothing; when your love is even tragically quiet and waiting, you are experiencing the love that leads to Easter.

This love may lead us into graves, but God’s great work is leading us through Saturday into Sunday.

And so we wait.

a big fish and the end of the world

The end of the world.

That’s a pretty loaded idea.  It haunts and shapes the American imagination about God more than just about any other question of our existence. It’s why Jack van Impe, Timothy LaHaye and John Hagee sell a lot of books and movies. We are unquestionably captivated by the imagery of the book of Revelation, a story of mythic dragons, trumpets and fire.

It seems to be a pretty grim tale for the big beautiful world and its colorful array of people, doesn’t it? In fact, some Christians, in an earnest eagerness for the coming of God’s Kingdom, secretly (or not so secretly) get gleeful about devastating wars, earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, famine, etc. Many will passionately preach the coming destruction of the world as inevitable or even God’s will.

Now, for other Christians (largely outside of the United States) the book of Revelation is a powerful, prophetic critique of the beastly empire of Rome, and worldly empires before and ever since, whose violent and monstrous power are defeated by a little Lamb and His peaceable Kingdom.

But for those of us who read it as a violent, God-sanctioned nuking of the great big planet earth, even if that reading is accurate, let’s consider another story in Scripture where a prophetic tale of impending apocalypse is delivered. I’m talking about the story of Jonah.

A whale of a tale, isn’t it?

Jonah ends up being one of the most successful prophets of them all, and he isn’t even trying! It’s comedic.

Jonah doesn’t even want to obey God; he evades him by traveling to the edge of the world, as they know it; inspires a bunch of idolatrous pagans on a boat to pray to Yahweh; as an act of salvation even in his disobedience, God carries him in the belly of a giant fish to be spewed out on the shores of Nineveh; and it’s there that he delivers the worst sermon in the history of all sermons:

..he shouted to the crowds: “Forty days from now Nineveh will be destroyed!” (Jonah 3:4)

Riveting stuff, right? You can tell Jonah worked hard on that one. Nevermind that the last guy I saw shouting at crowds on a street corner about the end of the world wasn’t what we might call “successful”. But what does the most violent civilization of the known world at that time end up doing? Well, a kingly decree goes out:

“Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; do not let them eat, or drink water. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God;” (Jonah 3:7-8)

Yep, the brutish, conquering society suddenly takes up fasting and repentance…

Hosea is throwing over tables right about now.

But, this isn’t the best part. The end of the story is where the really juicy stuff happens. This is where we see that the story isn’t really about the destruction of Nineveh – it’s about Jonah.

And, oh, is he angry with God. You see, God is exactly what Jonah had deep down known He’d always be. Loving. Merciful. He even accuses God of it:

“for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm.” (Jonah 4:2)

No matter how feverish Jonah gets about the destruction of the cruel people of Nineveh, Jonah somehow knows that God won’t follow through with it. And this is where the wisdom of this story pierces us.

Our job is not to be the I-told-you-so at the end of world history. It’s to intercede for the sake of its future.

We aren’t to get giddy when we think we hear God saying “I’m gonna nuke the sucker,” we’re to plead desperately with Him not to, as Abraham did for Sodom.

It isn’t Armageddon we’re drawing up the blueprints for, it’s the New Jerusalem!  We may only see the final brick laid when the King returns, but we  move towards it anyway.

The problem in this story is not that Nineveh needs to be destroyed. The problem is Jonah wants God to do it.

The problem for us isn’t mapping out the symbols of Revelation, charting blood moons and deciphering when God is going to destroy the planet and its precious people.

The problem is ..some Christians want Him to.

 

A house too small

The king said, “He may return to his house, but he is not to see me face-to-face.” So Absalom returned home, but was not permitted to see the king. (2 Sam 14:24)

This is the day King David truly lost.

As a musician and Christian, I have always identified with the towering life and character of David, the psalmist. The cumulative weight of his story within the greater narrative of Scripture can easily sweep up one’s imagination.

And David is largely unparalleled in Scripture, save by the life of Jesus Himself, while even the Messiah is prophetically known as “the son of David”. But as soon as we set out to follow in this mighty man’s footsteps we find reason after reason for pause. In our haste we readily identify ourselves as the hero of a story, getting caught up in the kingly development of this chosen son of Jesse, and we suddenly come face-to-face with his brokenness. And the greatest example of this may very well be found in his dealing with his own son, Absalom.

No, David isn’t always the hero we want him to be. He suffers great losses. And this is not just because his story is riddled by the failures of adultery and murder. David’s greatest short-coming may be in that he eventually repeats the legacy of the house of Saul in his own, driving his son Absalom far from his heart. (2 Sam 14:24, 28)

It is true that no other Old Testament figure seems to know the heart of the Father like David, especially when He says, “If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.” (Psalm 139:8)

But David does not simply know this as some objective revelator, but as an extremely subjective one. We may well assert David would confidently sing this psalm because he had tested the outer most extremities of God’s presence, plunging into the hellish depths of his own waters, only to find God was still there all the way down.

One of the greatest ways the life of David speaks into my life is found in this wrestling with King Saul. The anointed leader-to-be, earnestly serves the people of God and thus becomes the war-sung hero that Saul once was. For Saul, everything is summed up in this, such that to lose his popularity is to lose the whole kingdom. Eventually, Saul is driven mad enough by maidens singing, “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands” that in a fit of rage, he tries to pin David to the wall with his spear.(1 Sam 18:8-12)

And this has unfortunately been the experience of many sons with their spiritual fathers: target practice. Men who have not learned for themselves what it is to be a beloved son. These men, like Saul, have far too often perceived their own worth from the adulation of the masses. If they ever did listen to the whisper of the Spirit, “You are my beloved in whom I am well pleased”, they didn’t truly believe Him. No, they learned to strive for their approval, their insecurities played upon like a harp by the myriad of sing-song voices in their heads.

Oh, we all have them. We all wrestle with these gremlins from time to time. The danger is that these men are no longer boys. They’ve quit playing with rocks and slingshots, taking aim at soda cans on the back fence.  Now, they carry spears, and the strength to hurl them viciously at their eager and impetuous sons.

And while David had won mightily on many battlefields, he tragically misstepped when it came to the battle under the trusses of his own roof. Valiantly he trusted in the Lord against Goliath, dealt honor and respect when it came to Saul, and courageously brought the northern and southern kingdoms to a united Israel.  Yes, great was the house of David in the eyes of all those nearby, but not for the sons who lived inside its doors. Especially not for young Absalom, who would be refused a return.

There may still, however hidden, be a bit of Saul lurking in David. I am strongly convinced by Gene Edwards’ A Tale of Three Kings in that there exists a bit of Saul in us all.  We are often repeating the cycle of running from our King Saul only to find him buried in our own hearts, incessantly pondering, “How accepted am I? Am I losing popularity? Is someone clambering to take my place?”

The tragedy of Absalom is the tragic story of our children, mimetically becoming their fathers to find there’s room in the house for only one!

The aim and hope for my life is to build a house big enough for Absalom. I, too, am a son, driven-out by a father, whose house I left my home to serve. In hoping to have escaped King Saul forever, I am ever scrupulous to route out his anxious demons haunting my own soul. Even millennia later, we must learn to allow the outer Saul’s of our world to pierce our inner Saul, lest we take up his spear-throwing ways ourselves.

We need a vision for a bigger house, a different story. I am convinced something is terribly wrong when the elders of a house refuse even to imagine knocking out a wall, putting in fresh paint or doing whatever it takes for their children to make and share in their legacy among them.

Something is terribly wrong with a house of the Lord when it is bustling with elders whose children see no need to sneak out the back; they walk out the front unnoticed and forgotten.

So much greater then is the sin of a whole house, a lineage, filled with this brokenness of mankind, shoving their children to the edges of their world.

We need fathers who will see the zeal and fervor of their sons as cause for celebration. Fathers who will watch proudly as they ascend the hill of the Lord, however differently than their own path. Fathers who will give their hand readily and repeatedly, encouraging their sons and daughters to get back up, celebrate their successes and be unflinchingly present in their failures.

Let us say it: The house of Saul is a house too small.

Then, we might even quit building them.

 

featured image: “Saul Listening to David Playing the Harp”, by Erasmus Quellinus II